Logan-Sama schrieb:

I think that right now Akuma and Guile are the best characters in the game.Followed by Ibuki and Cammy.With Menat following behind.
Stylistically, those characters all have different approaches and philosophies to winning consistently, and that makes for interesting match ups in top 8s even if there is less diversity than Season 2.
Season 2 was dominated by characters who could activate V Trigger and kill you incredibly quickly. There was more diversity in the character representation in top 8s, but the style was really similar.

Guile not only has the best projectile game in SFV, he also has a set of very good normals for controlling the space directly in front and above him. When couple with a true reversal, a good v reversal and VT1 he has by far the best defensive tools in SFV.

But also, Guile has excellent walk speed, plus frame specials and normals on block and excellent safe ways to bait throw techs. He actually has a very strong corner pressure game.

When you look at Akuma, he benefits in the same way he always will: he has the best versions of Shoto tools with which the Street Fighter series is designed around. But he also has far more tools than any other shoto archetype.

Despite attempts to ‘nerf’ him in ever iteration of SF4 he remained high tier and incredibly powerful.I think we will see the same in V.His walk speed, stMK, crHP, stLP and his VT1 are all amazing tools that let him play with an advantage over most.

As long as he retains hard knock down from VT DPs and a plethora of + frame normals, his comeback potential will always be there.
And that’s not even looking at EX Demon Flip which is arguably one of the very best EX moves in the game still, despite ‘Hyakki tech’ being removed.

The difference between Guile and Akuma however is much like the difference between Cammy and Ibuki.
One has a far more linear and direct set of tools and therefor game plan. Whilst the other requires a great degree of situational awareness, ability to convert and dexterity.

This is the reason why I feel you will see more people pick up Guile than Akuma, in the same way more players picked up Cammy than Ibuki. There is simply less to learn and less to master.

Whilst it is good that characters such as Guile and Menat allow for a more defensive style to be played in SFV after 2 years of relentless attack being king, I would also like to see more characters lifted to be viable in different ways.

S3.0 Abigail is a good example of how a character can almost invalidate all others of the archetype. But now it appears Birdie performs more favourably in some match ups than Abigail. Some projectile based characters for example.

Looking at the Akuma > Ken > Ryu & Sakura dynamic, in a similar way to Birdie & Abigail > Mika > Laura > Gief >>>>>>> Alex,
I hope that these ‘lesser’ iterations of the character archetypes are made stronger in unique ways so they offer viable alternative play styles on a theme.

I’m also keen to see what Season 4 brings. Hopefully it is more sensible and creative buffs for some of the lesser characters and only minimal changes to the top tiers.

Rookie to Platinum
Going through the ranks again is helping me understand why players are stuck in a certain rank for a long time with little improvement. Fighting in gold to platinum is such a different pace from fighting ultra diamonds+ and my mind is still adjusting
In platinum, everyone goes ham until it works. The jumps are more frequent and predictable, they’ll always contest your wake up options, and almost 100% of the time players will quick rise
Platinum players will do things that are unsafe because it’s worked before and I think this is where the problem is
If a player does something that is unsafe but works against someone who’s also doing the same thing, both players are not learning from each other. They are just slugging it out to see who gets the most damage.
Now, these players have he capability to learn but since they’re playing against people with the same tendencies, they think it’s okay to keep doing it.
Here’s the second part of the problem. When they fight a more skilled and thoughtful player who adapts, they’ll either stop doing it or keep doing it. The player that “keeps doing it” will most likely get tilted / salty instead of figuring out what exactly is they’re doing that is wrong
In the lower leagues, I feel the mentality is “doing what I want because it worked before” and that’s the first stage of plateauing. The focus is on what got the damage and/or win rather than the entire match of what was wrong or what to improve on.
I’m not saying, “be faster at making changes on the fly”. It’s more of, if you won, great! But what else could you have done better? If you lost, why did you lose? If that set up didn’t work on this specific player, what set up will you try next time? Creating back ups for game plans will help you develop a thought process to your game play.Getting unstuck
there’s players that I’m fighting in platinum that I literally faced almost a year ago when I was diamond with Ryu. After playing them, I actually wasn’t surprised they were still in the same rank from a year ago because their game plan hasn’t changed. They might get a few wins here and there, few knock downs and good tricks, but all of their mistakes from before are still present. The major holes in their game is holding them back from improving and I think it’s because they’re focused on what’s working rather than what they need to tighten upSelf Awareness
Now, let’s talk about me as the player learning a new character going through the ranks. Whether I win or lose, I think and talk about what went right and what went wrong.
Right now, my anti-airs and ground game need the most attention. I get so many players get a free jump in on me because I’m choosing the wrong anti-air option for the punish. Not only am I choosing the wrong option, my decision making when choosing isn’t fast enough because I’m not comfortable yet with Cody’s options.
I tend to jump a lot more than I should because I’m not focusing on neutral buttons. Sometimes when I focus too much on my neutral buttons, I’m pressing buttons without much thought and that’s an issue. I have to start pressing buttons deliberately and with a purpose rather than throwing it out there hoping it hits them.
So even if I win, im trying to look for what I could’ve done differently, better, or do less of. I don’t care too much about winning, I just want to get comfortable and learn how to fight with Cody. The wins will come when I have a solid game plan and I know how to use my character.
Now keep in mind, this is not just for gold-platinum players. The observations are taken from my time in gold and plat, but the mentality to grow is for all players, including the experienced.
There’s always something to improve on. Labbing it out goes a long long way. We can’t map out a perfect game plan because each match will be different. It’s really about building a wide array of options instead of saying “shit I don’t know how to get out of this”.Mental Training
Try not to focus on the “dumb things”. Trust me, I’ve had a lot of crazy stuff happen to me in Ranked when I was in gold with Cody. I kept in mind all of the players tendencies. I didn’t have the most optimal punishes so I won just by thinking more about what they are most likely to do. I also tried not to get myself in that situation again.
If your opponent is going wild, let them go wild and punish them for their unsafe moves. It gave me the opportunity to learn how to crush counter properly though
As I’m going through the ranks again and learning a new character, it’s giving me the opportunity to ramp up slowly with my development on Cody and keep up with the change of pace in ranks. In gold, we saw that a lot of players were still trying to figure things out. We talked about how they were still learning punishes, combos, etc etc. No one was really teching throws or eating frame traps because they weren’t delay jabbing at all.
Now that we’re around Ultra plat, we’re starting to see some more strategic thought process in the players we’re fighting. They are starting to tech a lot more throws now, playing a bit of neutral, and some nice hit confirms.
This is where we take what we learned from our character and apply those buttons strategically instead of going with the big combos. During the match, I’m experimenting with different buttons at neutral to buffer into and I ’m observing player tendencies so I can expose them, now that I have a decent understanding of my buttons. That’s where the level up process comes into play.
When I lose or win, I think about what buttons worked best in specific situations. If I shimmied, what button did I press that gave me a big enough window to hit confirm it? How many times did I V-reversal in that match and did I need to do it that much? Should have I used zonk more or tornadoes to cover space?
If you lose, don’t let that loss go to waste. Don’t just lose and say to yourself, “yeah I messed up that combo” or “that guy did some crazy shit and won, BS”. My thought process is what did he do the most that blew me up and how could I have countered it? If I was constantly in the corner, what could have I done to stay my ground? Etc etc
What I see the most that are stuck in this league is the adjustment period. When we play the same person, they are always playing the same game for everyone. I know adaptation is easy to say but if I’m going to lose, I want to know why I lost. If I win, I want to know why I won.(edited)
It’s extremely important to be aware of your own game play. If you focus too much on your opponent, you’ll miss your opportunities and what you need to tighten up. Just because you won doesn’t mean it’s over because you played it perfectly.Losing Streaks
This is going to be different for everyone but I’ll share my attitude and process to dealing with losing streaks.
There was a couple weeks where I would lose close to 1K LP to 1.5K LP a night. I remember one night in Ultra Diamond, I lost 10 SETS straight. Instead of calling it a night and telling myself that maybe I needed to take a break, I was determined to figure out what was going wrong. It actually enables me to look deeper in my game play to find any patterns in my fireballs, timings of my set ups, and what I did on defense that’s putting me in bad positions. I would even try to replicate the scenario in the match just to catch that small detail.
For example, when I stand at this range, what is the button or special I do the most? Do I always throw a fireball after I back-dash from a throw break? How many games did I lose from an opponent jumping in on me from this exact same scenario?
I know this sounds like a lot of thinking but this is why I keep playing through my losing streaks. I have to figure it out and be aware of my actions. It’s also a sign that I might be on a break out process to level up so it encourages me to keep playing. If I recognize that I am on auto pilot, it’ll challenge me to create new strategies and experiment with different moves/specials at ranges I’m normally uncomfortable in. Auto-piloting is “doing things” without having a strategy behind it. You’re just doing what you’re comfortable with and hoping it works in the match.
Don’t let losing streaks discourage you. Play it through but like I said before, don’t lose without a purpose. You’re probably on auto pilot. You’re probably going too hard in certain situations. You’re probably dashing too much or jumping a lot. Recognize these small details in your game play and challenge yourself to change it. If you KNOW you ALWAYS throw a fireball there, I dare you NOT to do it.

Dependency
When I did the VT2 (crush parry) only challenge for Ryu, that made me realized how dependent I was on VT1 to close out games. I became so dependent on the wide utility of VT1 to give me situational advantage with FBs that knocked down, more damaging combos, increased juggle states, etc etc. When I switched to VT2, I lost insane amount of games. I got crush countered with whiffed parries. I missed optimal combos that I would normally get with VT1 to close out. My fireballs were regular FBs so I couldn’t do any extra pressure. All the tools I had with the activation of VT1 were stripped away from me. The only way I could possibly win at this point was to level up my neutral, increase my conversions from hit confirms, find new counter hit situations to conversions, and use the activation of VT2 as mental advantage to apply pressure to my opponent. The reason why I bring this up is because I believe that a lot of us might feel stuck because we are dependent on set ups and activations. You practiced all the optimized combos, the resets, the VT shenanigans, but you haven’t practiced or polished what to do in the beginning and middle. You’re practicing the end game. The reset that’s going to stun in 2 combos. How are you going to get there? What are you going to do during that process to properly defend yourself to last that long in the round? What if you never get that situation, how else can you win? I believe that’s where jumping in a lot comes from. We want the big damage combos and the corner carriers. But when someone shuts down your jump in game, what are your other options? It’s extremely important to polish your neutral, find the right buttons for the right match up, defend yourself properly, explore defensive tech, and practice realistic situational hit confirms. Having that dope set up/reset that you’ve been practicing in training mode should be a cherry on top to your excellent neutral, spacing, defense, and strategic button placementDiamond - Ultra Diamond
This was not easy. There are a lot of players that are in between these leagues. When I first ranked up with Ryu, I was stuck in Super Diamond and Ultra Diamond for months. With Cody, I made it from Rookie to Ultra Diamond in 2 1/2 weeks. That really showed me how far I’ve gotten in my game and what exactly I’m looking for when it comes to leveling up. I feel that in this league and onward, it’s player versus player. You should have a clear understanding of how to use your character. From the punishes, to the mix ups, and neutral buttons to use when it’s time to use it. Now it comes down to who you’re fighting and looking for patterns or tendencies in different situations. There are 3 categories I can break this down to in what I’m looking for and it’s fairly self explanatory.
Offense. Defense. Neutral. In offense, I look for button patterns, offensive jump timings, and corner pressure. What’s their favorite button to pressure with? What areas do they like to jump in from? How often do they shimmy and if there’s a button they press first before initiating the shimmy. Are they actively pressing buttons between my strings? How often do they press a button on their wake up? Data like that can give you some direction on what game plan to use as far as frame traps, anticipating jump ins, and what they’re most likely to do when you’re in the corner. Defense is what they tend to do in specific situations. After a DP, do they tend to back roll or back dash? How often do they tech and in what situations do they tech? Do they conserve their V-meter or do they often spend it for V-reversals? Look for specific times they like to use V-reversal. If it’s an escape v-trigger/v-reversal (Nash/cammy), look for how likely they are to use it in specific scenarios. It’s important to look for these behaviors early on so you don’t tunnel vision and get surprised when they find an escape route or v-reversal. Developing a defensive counter plan is just as important as creating an offensive set-play. Movements at neutral often give signs on how skillful a player is. If they’re staying in a certain range, bobbing in and out, shows signs of patience and probably counter-offensive play. When you press a button at a certain space, are they pressing a button with you to possibly counter? Spacing is crucial at neutral, especially when you’re the one on the counter-offensive side. Preemptively pressing buttons can be great to poke but when playing a skilled player, you have to understand what their intentions are at neutral too.
These aren’t character specific, its player specific. If you think about these 3 things and put the pieces together, your game-plan will change accordingly and the more prepared you’ll be in match. You won’t be caught off-guard as often and you’ll often feel like you have a good read on your opponent. Tunnel visioning can’t happen here because you’ll only think about 1 category rather than all 3.

This goes with learning any new skill but something I learned when I played Starcraft 2, another 1v1, high skill game, translated over here so Ill share them now.
There are 3 things that determine how quickly you improve.

Time spent playing

2. Focus during play

3. Quality of your practice

So lets go through each of those.
A lot of people will say, all the time "just play the game" and actually they are 1/3rd Correct. A reason some people don't improve at a reasonable rate is they haven't but in the general hours of playing to make the other factors count. Reading and watching tutorials, studying concepts, Understanding tech. These factors can't be amplified if you are not in game actually practicing them. The easiest example is say you learned a combo for a character, say you learned Ryu's Bread and butter combo. s.mp, c.hp xx hp.dp. its in all the guides, all the videos, you watch pro players do it. You hit it a couple of times in training mode. Thats not enough. Because a combo is not something that you want to be able to hit 50% of the time, 60% of the time. You need to be spending time practicing so you can hit it every single time you go for it in a game. And thats a concept that can stretch to any new concept you need to apply in game, there is the knowledge aspect but there is grinding that into your muscle memory so you can pull it out when you need too.
Focus. So similar to when you do physical exercise, your stamina can only last so long. Focus is similar in that respect that, like endurance its something you can train and build up. Thinking critical about what you are gonna do in game, between games, between rounds, reflecting on past games. That is also going to help you grow as a player. Like I said being able to do that for long periods, especially if you haven't trained that up, is really difficult but getting used that environment will help you play with more meaning and hopefully prevent you from Autopiloting and being too predictable.
The last one is Quality of Practice. So we've talked about the hours you train, and the focus you put into games, the last aspect is using that time and focus into something thats meaningful. For a high level player this often means: 1 match up, long set, same player. And that make sense, have the least variance to study how one match plays and its minor variance. But the thing is. Its really boring. Practicing vs a real person vs practicing against level 4 Ai is a more clear example of what I would be talking about.
But
Some players thrive in that environment (I personally enjoy that kind of training) but many people don't. And what happens is someone will subscribe that to a new player and they will become easily bored and frustrated by the amount of focus that takes up. That leads to less hours being put into the game, and therefore is as bad as playing with a low amount of hours and a low amount of focu

That part of the brain then sends a signal to the motor (movement) part of the brain

...which interprets it, then sends a signal to your finger

...which moves to press the button

That's pretty complex, and there are a few key components.

Visual processing - steps 1 and 2

Cognition - step 3

Motor response - steps 4-6

Together, these are often grouped as reaction time.
Visual processing speed
Visual processing speed declines with age, and the decline is more severe for visually complex scenes. Thus we might expect that something like DBFZ would present greater processing problems than a more visually uncluttered game like SFV or Injustice.
Over the course of adulthood, we could expect declines of up to 25% in processing speed between the ages of 20 and 65.
However, the brain is changeable. We used to think that, by the time you reach adulthood, it was essentially finalised. We now know that's not true. Practice can maintain youthful performance, or even reverse age-related visual deficits. Visual processing speed is one of the visual skills that can be improved by practice.
We would therefore expect that people like Sako and Daigo would be unaffected by age-related changes in visual processing speed. I've even seen this in one of my own studies, where adults of 65+ achieved results very close to a group aged 18-22 (albeit after three weeks of practice).
Cognition
This is a very complex area, but there's currently no reason to believe that it would be affected by age, assuming:

there's no evidence of neural illness

the individual is highly practiced in the specific task we're interested in

This is also where strategy and experience come in. They are likely to provide a benefit by priming the brain to receive a certain type of signal - i.e. Sako knows his opponent is likely to wake-up CA, so his brain can process the subtle cues faster, and deliver a faster response. Its like if you know your friend is in a crowd, you might be able to spot them, but if you didn't know they were there then you probably wouldn't see them until they were right beside you.
Motor response
This is the trickiest area to isolate, as nearly every study on it groups visual processing and motor response together. So the data I'm going to show (see graph) incorporates both of these elements in their Reaction Time measure (this is just data from one study, but the wider population should be pretty similar).

You can see from the graph that the average difference in reaction time between the ages of 20 and 40 is about 30ms. In Street Fighter terms, this is about 2 frames. However, there's also considerable variation between individuals. Just like with visual processing speed, we would expect that individuals who are highly practiced would be the least resistant to declines in reaction time.
Now here's something really important. The individuals in this study are just regular folk. If we did a similar large study on competitive (pro-level) gamers, I would expect:

The age effect would be significantly reduced, and would probably be almost flat for the first few decades

The curve for women would collapse onto the curve for men, as there's no evidence of a "peak" gender difference in reaction time. Remember, these are just regular folk in this study, and at the population level men tend to have more practice in reaction-based competition.

TLDR
There's no real evidence that we should expect a decline in reaction time between the age of 20 and 40 in people who practice a lot. And for people who don't practice, we would only expect a very small difference.
I hope that was useful. I'm happy to answer any questions, or take suggestions for any other areas that might be interesting to explore (eye-tracking?).

Q: “Why is it that you shoryuken foolz seem to think that playing cheap is cool? You should be a man and take a stand against lamerz for honorable play.”
(name withheld out of mercy)
Ah, the call of the scrub. They bleat out something like this to attract others of their sad species (known in layman’s terms as “losers”), who will feel sorry for them, and commiserate about the unfair tactics of their shamefully dishonorable tormentors (more commonly known as “winners”). They play the game in a little world of make-believe where they all aspire to earn the respect of their fellow losers, and to play with “honor” (even though no one’s quite sure what that means).
We get a lot of stuff like this. I have to wonder- where are all these scrubs coming from? Portland aside, it’s hard to be sure. I mostly just think of them as the Streetfighter equivalent of the Amish, but sometimes I wonder anyway- how did they get so confused? Why do they hold on to such silly ideas?
The precise contours of “cheap” are pretty mysterious. Far be it from me to actually be able to penetrate fully the dark workings of the mind of a scrub, but in an attempt to get a better feel for what they’re talking about here (if anything), I’ll try and analyze some apparent commonalities between the wide variety of things called “cheap”. Something that is cheap:
1) Wins. Ever notice that no one who just loses all the time ever gets their style called “cheap” (or “dishonorable”) no matter what they’re doing? I start with this because it helps to underscore the generally whiny, name-calling nature of the complaint. No matter how you play, no one seems to care much… unless you’re winning. If you’re not threatening their (sorry) dominance at the machine, the scrub doesn’t care what the hell you’re doing. It’s only when you’re doing something they can’t beat that he bothers to drop phrases like “cheap”. How can an innocent scrub tell when he’s been scandalized by the dreaded “cheap” play? The easiest way to recognize cheapness is not by looking for certain characteristics to the style of play (that can be confusing, and seems downright impossible since what’s “cheap” seems to change all the time!). No- just wait until you’re losing a lot. Then, rather than experience the fear that you might have to figure something difficult out, you can rest assured that the reason you were losing was because you were the victim of “cheap” tactics! The advice to aspiring scrubs here should be clear: If you want to ensure that you never accidentally play “cheap” (the precise definition is danged tricky!), just don’t win too much. Everyone knows that not winning too much is a proud tradition among all “honorable” players.

Winning a tournament requires more than just strategy and execution. It requires being able to look past all the distractions. It’s requires being able to grit your teeth and come back from what looks like an insurmountable lead. It’s being able to consistently stay on top of your game, and face down the best players in the country. And that takes mental toughness. In analyzing what tournaments (rather than just “winning”) require, this is almost invariably overlooked by scrubs- it’s not something that you can “see” on a video, and it’s often the missing ingredient that keeps otherwise excellent players from having any real shot at winning where it counts. Maintaining your focus is essential. Here are a few of the most common pitfalls:
That “not so fresh” feeling: Tournaments (if you’re not planning on losing early, and retiring to the fabulous snack bar) are almost tailor-made to sap your strength. You’re in an arcade. You’re tense. Everyone else there is tense. The music is loud. The lights are annoying. People smell. And you’re there for between 10-15 hours straight, usually eating highly crappy food (or none at all), subsisting on sugarwater.

Most people, when sizing up the opposition, or evaluating how “good” someone is, see only the most superficial aspects of a player. You look for the obvious- some cinchy repeatable tactic you can steal- the big combos, etc. This helps explain why some punks are (idiotically) able to come away from watching even the best players, saying things like, “He just got lucky”, “I’ve seen better”, or (my favorite) “He didn’t do anything I couldn’t do/haven’t seen before.”
So sad. Saying things like this only proves how weak you really are. It’s weak not just for having lost, but also for failing even to take anything away from the beating you just took. In the hurry to repair their (sad, local) egos, pride gets in the way of their being able to step back and figure out what really just happened to them. Instead of understanding it, they’re rushing to make it seem like nothing really happened at all. Predictably, they wind up saying, and then (incredibly) believing things like the above, preventing them from ever rising above the level they came in (and went out) at.

A big part of controlling the match is controlling not just the opponent, but the space around them as well. Really seeing how moves can control a space is pretty rare- most people just steal tactics theyve seen someplace else (dont get me wrong- learning (“stealing”) is fine, but can only happen after someone elses innovation. Innovating is best). They can understand that they work, and see it in practice, but lack the vision to have seen it for themselves. This is because most players look at the game and its moves in very concrete terms. They evaluate moves in terms of things like “priority”, speed, damage, comboability, etc. These things are important, and while top players may often speak that language, they understand it all at a deeper level. Usually, they have an almost intuitive feel for the more abstract characteristics of moves- way that they can control a space, closing down options for the opponent, and forcing them into certain responses.

Since Im talking to morons, Ill try and speak clearly: You scrubs watch these videos wrong. In particular, you watch them *passively*. A lifetime of butt-widening, beer-bellifying NFL fandom (and the like) has led to these sorry habits. You see a match, and you just sit back and watch it like a sitcom. Youre not living it alongside the players, trying to think like they do, in real time- youre just soaking it up like the spineless sponge you are. To really appreciate whats going on, you need to feel the tension, and try and react as they do.